Chicago Cubs
Kris Bryant: Part of the lavish Cubs rebuilding program.
The Chicago Cubs make baseball history almost daily. Off to a Major League record 27-10 start (as of May 17), this once laughable franchise is on pace to win a record-shattering 120-plus games.
No wonder Chicago, which hasn’t won a World Series since 1908, is hailed as the “Last Great American Sports Story” on the cover of the May 16 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Then something completely unexpected happened Tuesday, when the Cubs and their rowdy fans invaded Miller Park for the first of a three-game series: Milwaukee pitcher Chase Anderson took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, and the Brewers beat Chicago 4-2.
Chicago Cubs.
Joe Maddon still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Nevertheless, no other team even comes close to the Cubs’ plus-109 run differential, defined as total number of runs scored in all games minus total number of runs scored by opponents in all games. For context, the Brewers’ run differential was minus 38, before the Cubs series.
Chicago’s fast start has made Milwaukee’s rebuilding effort to return to competitiveness in baseball’s toughest division even more daunting.
I am a longtime non-fan of the Cubs and only slightly ashamed to admit that for several years, I refused to drive down a specific street on the way to my parents’ home in the Fox Valley because one of the nearby houses boldly flew a large Cubs flag in the yard.
That said, I can’t help but shake my head in quiet respect for what this year’s Cubs are doing.
Despite losing both games of a doubleheader to the lowly San Diego Padres the day Sports Illustrated hit mailboxes — that SI cover curse is alive and well! — the Cubs bounced back and took two of three from the Pittsburgh Pirates before coming into Milwaukee with a winning percentage of .750.
Only five years ago, the Cubs finished 61-101, 36 games out of first place. Enter Theo Epstein, who as baseball’s youngest general manager in 2004 led the Boston Red Sox to a World Series title for the first time in 86 years. Epstein became president of baseball operations for the Cubs in 2011 and began a rebuilding process even more epic than what he accomplished in Boston.
Together with fun-loving manager Joe Maddon, whom Epstein hired from the Tampa Bay Rays for the 2015 season, Epstein exorbitantly built a club for the ages with newly minted household names like Kris Bryant and 2015 Cy Young Award winner Jake Arrieta.
“We feel like we can win every game,” Bryant told SI. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Neither have the rest of us.
